NCIS, Season Five. Out tomorrow. (*****5/10)
Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing Season Five of NCIS on DVD Tuesday August 26th. NCIS stands for Naval Crime Investigative Service, but not once do they investigate anything that has to do with a belly-button. Oh, geez. I think I hurt my own brain with that cheesy joke. Sorry to subject you to such chicanery, I am simply trying to come to terms with NCIS. I want to describe this series using words other than “generic”, or “common” or “meh”. But nothing is springing to mind. In season five, they DO kill off a major character, which IS pretty new and cool.
But in the end, this show is still really…meh. There is a hot young guy who cracks jokes and does cool-guy stuff. Think Nick on CSI. There is a nerdy never-leaves-the-house scientist guy. Think David on CSI. There is a wise, older man overseeing the whole process. Think Grissom on CSI. There is a hot young woman who seems to place logic ahead of emotion. Think Sarah from CSI. And there is an older woman in charge, played by a formerly hot actress who is still very hot. Played by Lauren Holly in NCIS, or Marg Helgenberger on CSI. But it isn’t just CSI. I have seen these characters in Bones, and in NYPD Blue, and in Homicide. Also in JAG. NCIS is a spin-off of JAG.
The most obnoxious character is one I have seen in dozens of other shows as well. The airheaded moron chick who also happens to be a brilliant scientist. I can understand Abby not knowing the difference between a mocacchino and a latte. Or the difference between medium-rare and well done, or who won the World Series. But a brilliant scientist can’t possibly be this dumb in the rest of her life. Airheaded is one thing, but this woman should be dead. She is apparently too stupid to feed herself in her own home. And yet she can break down DNA in brilliant ways to discover the identities of killers and match voice prints to cell phones and all kinds of smart-girl stuff. But we’re basically meant to believe she’s never learned to tie her shoes, tell time, or read. Come on!
I don’t want to rag on NCIS too much though. But that’s pretty much exactly what I’m doing, isn’t it? By all rights, I should absolutely hate this show. It should really have been called NCSI, Neo-CSI. It is so generic, so obvious, and so…meh! But I do kind of like it. I like it because I like this stuff. The scientific police procedurals. There are some I can’t watch. Like, David Caruso is so obnoxious that I can’t bring myself to watch CSI: Miami. And simply because there are no characters that obnoxious, I can enjoy an episode or two of NCIS, sometimes in a row. It’s basically a show only for people who like this kind of show. And there must be a lot of people who like this kind of thing. Because almost all of these shows are still on the air. No matter how generic they may be.